


Amor Fati

by 136108



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant Through S8, I don't even have the boy's last name, I take a lot of liberties with Curtis but that's fine because VLD has given me nothing to go off of, M/M, Okay I made his last name Bose because I saw it on Tumblr once, Then Not-So Canon Compliant Post-S8
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-09-24 15:12:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17102960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/136108/pseuds/136108
Summary: Amor Fati (lit. “love of fate”): a Latin phrase that describes an attitude in which one finds acceptance with everything, good and bad, that has happened to them throughout their life. It connotes a sense of contentment with one’s life, such that one would be willing to live out the same life over and over again, for all eternity.I was disappointed with how Season 8 provided no background on the relationship between Curtis and Shiro, so I decided I would do it myself. This is the story of Curtis and Shiro, from their time struggling with ambitions as cadets in the Garrison to their time struggling to mend a fractured galaxy after the war with Honerva. It tracks how each of them grow and change over the years, and how they are eventually able to come together both during and after times of war. And it shows how if you were to ask either of them if they’d be willing to do it all over again, they would each answer with a resounding yes.





	1. Chapter One

When the knock came at the door, Curtis knew exactly who it was and why they were there. He’d been waiting for a visit from the Galaxy Garrison ever since the leaks had occurred. It was inevitable, and he knew the man on the other side wouldn’t be above knocking the door down to get inside. So he sighed, turned the stove’s heat down to low, and made his way over to the door.

Commander Iverson cut an imposing figure, despite the beer belly his middle age had bestowed upon him. Curtis figured that some part of him would always remember the man as he had been back when Curtis was a cadet: a strict, short-tempered instructor who never shied away from administering punishments. He had plastered an insincere smile over his face as soon as Curtis had opened the door, and Curtis forced the corners of his lips upward in response.

“Commander.”

“Curtis,” Iverson began, but Curtis put up a hand.

“Please, Commander, I have an idea of what you’re planning on asking me.” Iverson raised an eyebrow, but Curtis plowed forward. “I am perfectly happy with where I am, and I do not plan on returning to the Garrison.”

Iverson’s smile dropped, and he sighed. “May I come in?”

No, Curtis thought, but he forced another smile and stepped aside. “Would you like anything to drink?” he called, stepping into the kitchen to turn the burner off. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me in the middle of making dinner.”

When he received no response, he poked his head out into the living room. Iverson was standing in the center and surveying his surroundings with pursed lips. Curtis felt a hot flush of shame course down his spine. He knew that his tiny, one-bedroom apartment was a noticeable downgrade from the Garrison’s barracks. The paint on the walls was chipped in some places, the carpet had a couple of coffee stains, and one of the lights in the living room was burned out. He’d tried to hide the chipped paint with strategically-placed photos, and the stained carpet with furniture when possible. Still, he couldn’t do anything to distract from how cramped the apartment was, or how small the windows were. He’d been perfectly fine living here alone—he hadn’t exactly had many visitors—but now that Iverson was there, he was uncomfortably aware of just how pathetic his living situation was.

“I know it’s not much,” he said, catching Iverson’s attention. “But I’m happy enough. And at the end of my contract, when I get signed on as a full-fledged employee, my salary will triple. I can move into a different place then.”

Iverson sat down on the sofa and chuckled. “You don’t need to justify your life choices to me, son.”

Curtis twitched, and forced another smile. “Yes. Something to drink?”

“I’m all right, thank you.” Iverson patted the sofa next to him. “Sit with me.”

“Commander,” he began. “I really am quite sure—”

The look in Iverson’s eyes sharpened. “Sit.”

Curtis hesitated, but sat down anyways. He tried to remind himself that he wasn’t in the military anymore, and that Iverson wasn’t the same authority figure that he might have been back in the academy. Iverson was just here to give him an offer, and he would reject that offer, and that would be that.

“I know you’re happy with your current job,” Iverson began, leaning slightly forward with steepled hands. “But I think you have so much more potential than satellite communications. Curtis, your leaks caught my attention. No one else would have taken a second look at those records, let alone have noticed what you did. Your leaks helped stop the exploitation of classified government data, and frankly—we at the Garrison were impressed with how well you managed to cover your footsteps. If I hadn’t remembered you from your graduation a few months ago, we would never have been able to find you.”

Curtis took a breath, leaning back slightly. He was familiar with the Garrison’s recruitment tactics, and figured they were similar for both the academy and the base itself. Iverson was going to compliment him, and build him up as if he were special. He would try to make him feel needed, and important. But Curtis didn’t need to feel important. He was perfectly content to play the long game, to rise up the ranks in his company over time until he had a secure enough platform to begin developing his own works. He had a plan for his life, and he wasn’t about to be swayed by Iverson’s tactics.

“We need you at the Garrison, Curtis.” Iverson’s gaze bored straight through him. “Your skills with communications and network security are extremely valuable. I trust you’re aware of the Kerberos mission?”

That caught his attention, and he looked up in confusion. Of course he’d heard of the Kerberos mission; it was practically all anyone could talk about during his time as a cadet. It had been revolutionary; the furthest human-manned expedition ever undertaken. If the Kerberos mission succeeded in reaching Pluto, then extrasolar exploration was sure to follow soon afterwards.

“Takashi Shirogane has been chosen as the pilot for the Kerberos mission,” Iverson continued. “I remember that you looked up to him during your time at the Garrison.”

Curtis raised an eyebrow. True, he had admired Shirogane, but what cadet hadn’t? He wasn’t at all surprised that he’d been chosen for the Kerberos mission; Shirogane might be young, but there was no doubting that he was the best pilot the Garrison had to offer. Curtis had never even aimed to be a pilot, and had still admired Shirogane for his bravery and for his humility. Shirogane had never once bragged or exploited his fame and talent, and Curtis respected that.

“We need you in that control room,” Iverson said, reaching out and placing a hand on Curtis’ shoulder. Curtis was sure it was supposed to draw him in, but he just wanted Iverson to finish talking and leave. “We need the best people on this planet helping to keep that crew safe on their mission. With such a long range involved, our communications specialists are absolutely essential for the success of the mission. The launch is in a little less than three weeks. If you join us, you’ll be promoted to Communications Officer immediately.” He gave a small smile, glancing around the room again. “And I can promise your salary will be much more than what your company would ever be willing to give you.”

Then he looked expectantly at Curtis, probably expecting him to cave and graciously accept his offer. Instead, Curtis shook his head, standing up. “Commander, I enjoyed my time at the academy, but I have no desire to continue working at the Garrison. I love the work I’m doing right now. I’m sure you’ll be able to find someone else to help you with the Kerberos mission. Now if you would please excuse me, my dinner’s been sitting out for far too long.”

Iverson’s gaze hardened, and he stood up abruptly. “I’ll show myself out. But I hope you know that you’re making the wrong decision here.”

“I know you think so, Commander.”

He held out a card, which Curtis took to humor him. “When you realize your mistake, call me. The position will always be open for you.”

Curtis forced one last smile and closed the door behind Iverson just a smidge too quickly to be polite. He knew he was making the right decision for himself, but that didn’t make it any easier to stand up to a man like Commander Iverson. Then he returned to the kitchen, where he took a long look at his dinner before transferring it into a Tupperware container and placing it into the fridge. The visit had cost him his appetite.

 

* * *

 

When Shiro opened the door to his quarters, Adam was sitting on his bed. He only needed to take one look at the packed duffel bag next to him to know it was over. He took a deep breath—in through his nose, and out through his mouth. Adam didn’t look up when he entered; he just kept staring at his hands, which were clasped in his lap.

“I suppose you’re here to finally tell me that you got accepted for the Kerberos mission,” Adam said quietly.

Shiro nodded, not quite sure what to say. He knew that Adam had known for a while, but it had taken him a good amount of time to work up the courage to actually bring it up to him in person. “…And you’re here to tell me that you’re moving out,” he ventured, after a few seconds of dead silence.

“Yes.” Adam took a deep breath, and raised his head to make eye contact with him calmly. “We both knew this was coming.”

They’d known it for a long time. Shiro couldn’t even remember the last time they had slept in the same bed; for the past several days, Adam had been staying out later and later under the pretense of grading. Shiro wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Adam actually had all of that work, but it was easier just to accept it at face value. He didn’t have enough energy for a real argument; he hadn’t for a long time. Even now, he didn’t feel much. He knew he should probably be upset; should probably be crying or yelling or begging Adam to stay. It said so much about what their relationship had come to that he couldn’t bring himself to do any of those things.

The silence stretched on for several minutes, during which they each avoided eye contact. “I was never going to give up my dreams and change my life plans,” Shiro eventually whispered. “You know, that, right?”

“I’ve known that since the day I met you.” Adam looked up at him with a sad little smile. “And I was never going to spend my life waiting here on the ground for you.”

Shiro took a few steps forward, just enough that he could lower himself into the armchair by the window in the corner of the room, facing the bed.

He swallowed, and said, “I’m sad that it has to end like this.”

“But not sad that it has to end,” Adam said, laughing quietly. “I get what you mean. Though I’m glad we aren’t yelling at each other.”

At least if they were yelling at each other, it would mean that they cared. Anger would be better than this resigned numbness that had started at the base of his spine and was spreading to the very tips of his fingers and toes. “How did this happen?” he asked, voice barely a whisper. It seemed wrong to break the silence in the room. It felt as if they were at a funeral, mourning the inevitable death of their relationship. It had been dying slowly, agonizingly, and silently for months, but now that it was finally dead there was still no relief. Only emptiness. “We were so in love.”

When he looked up, Adam had closed his eyes. “I was going to marry you someday,” he said. “Did you know that?”

Shiro desperately wished he could feel something, anything, at that revelation. “No,” he said, wetting his lips. “I didn’t.”

Adam laughed again. “Yeah, I figured. I guess it’s a good thing I never asked.”

He didn’t sound sad; just tired. Shiro felt the same way. He wasn’t sure at what point their relationship had started to die; he had a feeling that it had started long before he’d started training for the Kerberos mission. This much damage couldn’t be done in just a few months’ time; it had to have been there from the start, silent and unnoticed, until it slowly began to grow. It was like a tumor; they didn’t notice it until it was too late to cut it out or to treat it. By the time Shiro realized, there was nothing to do except watch their relationship die. He had seen the train wreck coming in slow motion—so slow that by the time the train actually hit him, he was so resigned to the fact that he felt nothing at the impact.

“I do still love you,” Adam offered. “But not in the way that either of us want or need.”

“I know,” Shiro said. “A part of me will always love you, too.”

“I know.”

Shiro glanced around the room. “You don’t have to move out, if you don’t want to,” he said. “There won’t be any use for this place after the launch.” I won’t be here, he doesn’t say. You won’t have to see my things or look at my face.

Adam sighed, and stood up. Shiro stood with him, unsure of what to do. His hands rested at his sides limply as Adam slung the strap of his duffel bag over his shoulder. “I think you know why I can’t stay here,” Adam said softly. He was still dry-eyed; both of them were. “I’m going to be staying with Maria; she teaches the year below the one I do.”

“Yeah, okay,” Shiro said. “I understand.”

And he did. This place was filled with far too many memories, of times towards the beginning of their relationship when every moment was full of wonder and novelty. When both of them were still overwhelmed with the depths of their feelings for each other, with the joy of new love and of first times. They had shared a bed for the first time within these walls; had helped each other through nightmares and insecurities and illness. The brightness of their emotions and their memories had painted vivid rainbows over these walls in Shiro’s mind; now all he could see was a muted gray, their joint resignation and exhaustion sapping up all of the colors. He wasn’t even sure if he would be able to bring himself to live out his last few weeks on earth in this place.

In a way, he was glad that Adam had been the one to initiate it. For the past few months, they’d been playing an awful game of chicken, stretching their relationship out further and further, both of them trying to avoid being the one to bring it up. Shiro had resolved himself to breaking up with Adam after delivering the news about Kerberos; but Adam had saved him from that by being ready to go before Shiro even opened his mouth.

“When do you launch?” Adam asked, even though they both already knew.

Shiro was grateful to him for having broken the silence. “Eighteen days. Will I see you before then?”

Adam gave him a tired smile and shook his head. “Probably not.”

It was nothing he hadn’t already known, but it was still hard to hear. He might not be sad that they were ending, but Adam had still been a friend for many years and was still dear to him. He forced himself to nod. “Right.”

“So this is goodbye for us.”

“Yes. It is.”

They didn’t hug; it would have been both too much and not enough at that point. Instead, they lapsed into silence until Adam broke their eye contact to move past Shiro. He didn’t turn to follow him, to see him out; Adam knew his way, and they had nothing left to say to each other. In his wake, the room somehow seemed bigger and emptier than before. Shiro wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself, and ended up sitting back down in the armchair. His gaze wandered around the room, before coming to idly land on the empty space on the bed where Adam had just been sitting. As he sat, the silence in the room expanded and became oppressive, blanketing everything until it felt that there was nothing left.


	2. Chapter Two

Curtis managed to hold out for twelve days before caving and calling the number on the card Iverson had left him. He’d known he was fighting a losing battle ever since Iverson came to visit him. The morning after the visit, he woke up to a telephone call from his manager telling him that he was being let go from the company. Because he’d been working as an intern, and was still a minor, his manager said, the company wasn’t obligated to offer him any kind of severance package. Curtis tried to ask why he was being fired, but all he got in response was some vague hand-waving. The manager had then hung up, leaving him standing numbly in the middle of his bedroom, phone still held to his ear.

The legality of his firing seemed dubious at best to him, but he got the sense that it would be futile to press the matter. He now had bigger problems to worry about: his rent was due at the end of the month, and he’d been fired before receiving his paycheck. Even if he used all of the money left in his emergency fund, he’d only be around halfway there—he was fresh out of the academy, after all, and had only been able to save money for a few months. That left him with ten days to come up with two weeks’ worth of his previous salary.

He’d tried desperately to find odd jobs around his neighborhood. As a child, he’d never been given an allowance and had needed to make money for himself, so he was no stranger to work ranging from mowing lawns to shoveling snow. He’d even applied for a few jobs at a few nearby gas stations and convenience stores, hoping that he’d hear back soon enough to get in a few long days’ work. But it was as if he were wearing a scarlet letter around his neck; wherever he went, it seemed that no one needed work, even places that said they were hiring online.

The sketchy situation surrounding his firing seemed to have spread to the rest of his life; no one seemed to want his work, but no one had good reasons for their refusal. By the end of the first week, Curtis had a pretty good idea that he wouldn’t be able to find work anywhere, despite his qualifications. Asking his parents for money was out of the question; they were more likely to hang up on him before he could get a single word out than to help him. He tried to land a few commissioned coding jobs online, but even those fell through.

By the end of the month, he was nowhere nearer to meeting his rent than he’d been before. If anything, he was further away than ever; he’d tried to budget his food, water, and electricity as much as possible, but there were inevitably still charges for them. He desperately contacted the landlord, offering to send over all of the money he had. The only response he got was the next day, when the landlord knocked on his door to tell him in-person to keep his money and to be gone before noon the next day.

He didn’t call Iverson immediately, perhaps trying to delay a conversation he never wanted to have. Instead, he sat on his sofa in the living room, taking deep breaths and trying very hard not to cry. He hated the feeling of giving up, of crawling back to Iverson on hands and knees, but he didn’t see any other option. Homelessness was near-impossible to come back from, and his landlord had been immune to his pleas for sympathy earlier that day. It was an unavoidable fate if he didn’t accept the Garrison’s offer. And so, with the acrid taste of defeat lingering in the back of his mouth, he dialed Iverson’s number.

“I am so glad you reconsidered, Curtis,” was the first thing Iverson said.

The smug undertone to his voice sent a bolt of anger down Curtis’ spine. He knew, instinctively, that the Garrison—that Iverson—was behind all of this. It was impossible for someone’s life to go downhill so randomly and so mysteriously in less than two weeks without outside interference. There was no other organization with that kind of power that would have any motivation to screw with his life in this way.

His anger vanished almost as suddenly as it had appeared. Curtis wasn’t the one with the power in this situation; and both of them knew it.

His mother had always told him to smile when speaking over the phone, because people could hear it in your voice. So Curtis forced the corners of his lips to turn upwards as he said, “I’m sure you are.”

“May I ask what prompted you to reconsider?”

That bastard; he knew full well. Curtis took a deep breath and said, “I think you’re well aware.”

His tone might have been a touch too passive aggressive, because Iverson’s turned dangerous. “I don’t quite know what you’re implying.”

Shit. Curtis replied in his sweetest, most unassuming tone, trying to backpedal out of dangerous territory. This man was, after all, the one with the power to grant him a job. “I only thought that you’d try to keep an eye on someone you were trying to recruit, Commander; I meant no disrespect.”

“You’re very right,” Iverson said, tone back to normal. Curtis breathed a sigh of relief. “We like to keep an eye on the progress of all academy graduates, but especially ones we think are most important to the advancement of humanity.”

Curtis wanted to tell him to cut back a bit on the bullshit, but he bit back his words and instead hummed in assent. “Is it alright for us to meet in person to discuss the details of my contract—the duration, my responsibilities, and the like?”

“Of course, of course,” Iverson assured him. He then saved Curtis from the awkwardness of mentioning his impending eviction by continuing, “I do need to ask you to report in as soon as possible.”

“How early, exactly, is that?” Curtis asked cautiously.

“Tomorrow morning, if possible. We’re already making an exception for you by allowing you to join the Kerberos mission less than a week before its launch, so we need you here immediately. I personally vouched for you to Admiral Sanda.”

At this point, Iverson paused and waited expectantly, which Curtis took as a cue to offer his gratitude. “I do appreciate that, Commander,” he said, trying to sound as genuine as possible.

“Yes, well, because the launch is so soon, you’re going to need to spend the entirety of the next six days catching up on the details of the mission,” Iverson said. “When you get to base, you’ll be given the security clearance necessary to know the intricacies you’ll need for your job.”

“I understand,” Curtis said.

It was extremely unorthodox for someone to be brought in for any mission this late; he’d half-assumed that the position would no longer be available to him because of how long he’d waited before phoning in. He knew for a fact that Shirogane had set his aims for the Kerberos mission years ago; he and the rest of the Kerberos crew had likely been training for the mission for all of the past year. He wasn’t sure it would be humanly possible for him to fulfill the standard expectations in terms of mission preparation. Given how much Iverson had stressed him being a special case, he expected that he’d be given a more specialized role that would allow him to cut corners on some of the more generic information and focus in on a few specific pathways or algorithms.

“I hope you realize that you are making the right choice,” Iverson began, “not only for humanity, but for yourself.” He waited for Curtis to half-heartedly agree into the speaker before continuing. “I’m sure that William will be so proud to hear of your contribution to the Kerberos mission.”

The mention of his brother’s name shocked Curtis into silence for a few moments. It took him several tries before he managed to speak. “I’m—” he began hoarsely, and cut himself off. He swallowed, hard, before continuing. “I’m sorry?”

“I thought you were aware. William enlisted in the academy at our sister location two years ago.” Iverson sounds genuinely confused, at least.

“No, I haven’t—” Curtis wet his lips, mind racing. “I’m—my family and I haven’t been on speaking terms for some time.”

“I see.” Iverson didn’t seem interested in opening that can of worms anytime soon; Curtis could hardly blame him. “Regardless, it’s quite an accomplishment to be part of this mission. You should be proud.”

Curtis couldn’t quite find it within him to reply. His mind was stuck on his brother’s name. How long had it been since he’d even seen his face, or heard his voice? He’d never known Will to aspire for the stars in the way he had as a child; why on earth would he have joined the academy?

“Right. Well, I expect to see you tomorrow, as early as possible,” Iverson said.

Somehow, Curtis managed to mumble some sort of acceptable farewell, and hung up the phone. As soon as he had, he slumped backwards against the couch cushions, staring off into nothing.

He tried to imagine Will the way he’d been one of the last times he’d seen him—as a giggly ten-year-old boy who hadn’t lost all of his teeth yet, with an absolute bird’s nest of thick, black hair sitting on top of his head. He couldn’t even begin to imagine his loud, wild brother as a cadet. The thought of Will wearing a military uniform, or answering orders from a vaguely-Iverson-like figure, was almost laughable.

Will would have to be around fifteen years old now, though, and a person can change a lot in five years. Curtis would characterize himself as a cautious optimist; he preferred to think on the bright side, but tried to be as practical as possible. He didn’t want to falsely raise his hopes. That being said, them both being at the Garrison—albeit at different bases—meant that they were closer than they’d been in years. Maybe now that five years had passed, their parents would have loosened Will’s leash a little. Maybe, just maybe—he’d be able to see his brother.

 

* * *

 

Before he was officially accepted to the Kerberos mission as its pilot, Shiro trained for a little over a year. Fresh out of the Garrison, he served primarily as a recruiter and fighter pilot. But in his spare time, he put himself through hell, physically and mentally, to prepare for the role. He spent hours in flight simulations, trying to break the records he himself had set in the months previous. In the gym, he worked himself to the bone, and never stopped until he was on the verge of collapsing from exertion. He spent many a late night in the Garrison library with Matt, trying to cram as much information about physics and planetary astronomy into his head as possible. Often, he went to bed mumbling vocabulary terms under his breath. When they’d still been together, Adam had sometimes told him come morning that he’d been muttering things about semimajor axes or rotation periods or surface temperatures in his sleep. It was just about the hardest Shiro had worked for anything, ever.

But all of that was nothing compared to the tsunami of work that hit him once he was admitted to the program. It wasn’t uncommon for his day to be completely full from 0600 to 2200. The year before, when he’d self-trained, it had been more like a particularly intense part-time job. This year, though, training for Kerberos was his only responsibility. His training was a higher intensity—and it was never-ending. The stakes seemed higher, too; with every passing day, the deadline for launch seemed more and more imminent. Instead of being his own judge, Shiro was now being evaluated weekly—and sometimes daily—by teams of professionals in a plethora of fields.

He spent hours exercising each day, with additional physical training on top of that. He had weekly visits with a physician who was constantly changing the cocktail of medications that were meant to prevent his muscle spasms and treat his chronic pain. He had daily flight lessons, because being the best pilot in the Garrison wasn’t enough when he’d never flown the particular spacecraft before. He had several sessions a week with top-ranking professors, cramming knowledge about everything from geology to engineering to aerostatics into his brain. He was expected to memorize pages of knowledge from fields he had never even heard of. And he was constantly running in and out of meetings with all sorts of specialists and engineers, because he was expected to stay on top of everything even remotely related to Kerberos.

At this point—only four days away from the launch—Shiro lived, spoke, and breathed Kerberos at every second of every day. The only time his mind got a break from racing on and on about the mission was when he slept, and he’d been sleeping less and less as the date got closer.

It was because of how busy he was that he was surprised when he got a summons from Commander Iverson, who requested for him to come to his office alone. The Commander was in charge of this particular Garrison base, and so he’d been present at every meeting Shiro had been at for the past year, but the Kerberos mission wasn’t his project. Admiral Sanda was the one who had been spearheading the mission, and so Shiro had only ever had reason to meet one-on-one with her, rather than with the Commander.

The Commander was sitting at his desk when Shiro entered, his typical stern expression on his face. Just in front of the desk sat a man with dark brown hair, who turned around when the door opened. When he saw Shiro, he visibly swallowed, looking a bit starstruck. His eyes were the color of ice.

“Pilot.” Shiro’s attention abruptly snapped away from Blue Eyes to the Commander as he greeted him warmly—or, rather, as warmly as a man like the Commander could greet anyone. “I know how busy you are, so we’ll be quick.”

Shiro nodded, now curious as to why the Commander wanted him to meet Blue Eyes. It must have had something to do with the Kerberos mission; at this point, no one would dare occupy his time with anything else. But he was very sure that he’d never seen Blue Eyes before; he would have remembered him if he had.

“This is Communications Specialist Curtis Bose,” the Commander said, gesturing to Blue Eyes. “He will be taking over communications for the Kerberos mission.”

Shiro held himself back from raising a brow. He was being introduced to a new ground crew member only days before the mission? He hadn’t thought such a late entry to the program even possible. As far as he’d known, the mission staff had been fixed for the past six months.

At the Commander’s gesture, Blue Eyes—Curtis—got up to shake Shiro’s hand. His lips turned up in a pretty little smile as he did so. “Nice to meet you, sir,” he said softly.

Shiro smiled back at him warmly. “The pleasure’s all mine, Curtis.”

It may or may not have been his imagination playing tricks on him, but a faint blush appeared on Curtis’ cheeks, though he maintained eye contact. “I looked up to you a great deal as a cadet, sir,” he said earnestly. Notably, he didn’t immediately let go of Shiro’s hand.

Ah. This was hardly the first time Shiro had met a fan; so far, Curtis seemed a bit more reserved and less…excessive than some of the others had been. Shiro was about to deliver an impressively witty, yet safely humble reply when the Commander spoke.

“I wanted to introduce you to Specialist Bose because he’s a bit of a special case here; he joined us two days ago and only graduated from the Garrison a few months before that. But I can assure you, he is entirely competent; he graduated a year early, at only seventeen.”

Twenty-one-year-old Takashi Shirogane, who had never been and had no desire to ever be a cradle robber, abruptly let go of Curtis’ hand and banished all thoughts about Curtis' lips from his mind. “…How lovely,” he said, after taking a moment to recover.

“And he’s done incredible work in the short time since he’s graduated,” the Commander continued on, oblivious to Shiro’s double-take. “He was recruited by GX straight from the academy, and discovered a design flaw in their communications pathway that revealed that the company’s CEO had been sharing classified government data with private, third-party organizations. The company has since had a change in management, for obvious reasons.”

“Of course,” said Shiro, only half-listening. This time, when he smiled at Curtis, he channeled the big-brother smile he used on Keith, who was still only in his second year at the academy. “That’s very impressive. I’ve never doubted your ability to find us the best of the best, Commander.” Turning back to Curtis, he added, “I’m glad the Commander was able to bring you in, Specialist Bose. I hope we work well together.”

“Me too,” Curtis said, smiling sweetly at him.

“Now, if I’m not wrong, you’re about to be late to a meeting,” the Commander said.

Shiro’s mind raced for a split-second before he remembered which meeting the Commander was talking about. It was one of what seemed like a thousand meetings and touch-ups with the spacesuit designers; this meeting would involve all three crew members trying on their one indoor and two outdoors suits for any last-minute tailoring. It was bound to be a solid hour or two of mostly standing in one place while people poked and prodded at him—also known as Shiro’s definition of a fun time.

“Commander Iverson, Specialist Bose,” he said, nodding his head quickly in a farewell. Then he turned and began making his way to the base’s Materials division at the fastest pace he could achieve while maintaining his dignity. As he turned a corner, he pressed a few buttons on the timepiece at his wrist, dialing Matt.

“Hey, what’s up?” Matt said, voice drowsy.

“You’re supposed to have your ass down here to get fitted in like three minutes and I know you definitely forgot all about it,” Shiro got out in a rush.

Matt swore loudly and erupted into a flurry of motion on the other end of the line. “Why did you have to remind me about the fittings?” he complained. Based on the amount of thumping and cursing coming from his end, he was having difficulty navigating the furniture in his room, where he had undoubtedly been holed up reading textbooks like the giant nerd he was. “Why couldn’t you remind me about the interesting meetings instead?”

Shiro tipped his head back and laughed loudly. He was so busy he couldn’t always remember his name, and he was being worked to the bone more than he’d ever thought possible, but in four short days he was going to go to space—to space—with his best friend. Exhilaration rushed through his veins at the thought.

“Come on, Matt,” he said giddily. “Let’s do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, a 17 year old girl who is (almost) a fully functional adult, writing about 17 year old Curtis: a baby, a sweet little baby boy
> 
> Fun fact: in this chapter, when Shiro first speaks to Curtis, he refers to him by first name, even though Garrison protocol states that he should call him “Specialist Bose.” But once he realizes how young he is, he switches over to “Specialist Bose” real fast.
> 
> Also, don’t get your tits in a twist about their ages—remember that Voltron misses out on three years while in the quintessence field with Lotor, so they stay the same age while everybody else gets three years older. So Curtis is 17 when Shiro is 21 in this chapter, but well before any romance occurs, he will be only one year younger than Shiro and will be well in his early twenties.


	3. Chapter Three

Curtis liked to think of himself as a relatively pragmatic and reasonable guy. He was level-headed under pressure, and prided himself on remaining rational and logical in stressful situations.

What he was doing right then was against all of those characteristics, but he hadn’t been able to sleep properly since the news about the Kerberos mission. ‘Pilot error,’ his ass. There was something fishy about Kerberos’ demise, and the Garrison was just trying to cover it up without seriously investigating what had actually gone wrong.

To be fair, it probably wasn’t necessary to jump directly to what he was currently doing, but Curtis was convinced that going through the final transmissions received by the Garrison from Kerberos would reveal something, anything, that could prove useful.

If the Garrison was doing what he thought they were, they probably hadn’t gone through those transmissions thoroughly enough. And even if they had, they didn’t have him look at them. Curtis was perfectly aware of his flaws and limitations, but he did have a knack for looking at issues in unorthodox ways. It was how he’d managed to find the additional (and illegal) data transmissions during his internship when experts who’d trained for longer than he’d been alive hadn’t noticed any abnormalities at all. He thought that if he took a look at things, he might notice something that the Garrison hadn’t.

He was currently making his way down towards the control room, Iverson’s ID clutched tightly in his right hand. He’d lifted it from the man at the Garrison’s bar, which was crowded enough that even if the man found his ID was missing, it’d be impossible for him to tell who had taken it. He’d wipe the ID clean from prints before dropping it somewhere to be found once he was done. But first, he had to use it to get in.

It was after curfew, so he didn’t have to worry about others milling about the base. At night, the base retained only its automated operations and a small crew of guards. It had only taken a few hours of observation the night before for Curtis to get a sense of the patrol patterns, and from there it was a piece of cake to find a clear path from his rooms to the control center.

He reached the end of the hall, pressing the ID up against the scanner as quickly as he could. As soon as the metal door slid shut behind him, he felt a bit of tension release from his shoulders. He should be safe for now; Iverson and Sanda were the only people who currently had access to this room. He was currently holding Iverson’s ability to get in, and Sanda was at a different base, not due to return until the day after tomorrow.

Even though he should be fine, he was still working against the clock—he had until 04:30 before curfew would end and others would begin leaving their rooms at the earliest, so he had to dispose of Iverson’s ID and be back in his rooms by then, or else risk getting caught in the act. So he wasted no time in booting up the systems and sitting down at his old station. The password to access files hadn’t been changed, so he was able to easily pull up the last few transmissions received from the Kerberos mission.

The day of what the Garrison was calling “the crash” (despite no actual evidence of the spacecraft crashing presenting itself), mission control had replayed these last transmissions several times. Curtis had been there for all of it—for the horrifying way Matt’s enthusing over space ice had transformed abruptly into Shiro shouting desperately for everyone to get down. He could remember the panic he felt welling up in his chest as the room erupted into chaos around him, the sense of helplessness he felt as he tried and failed to re-establish visuals and audio over and over again.

What Curtis was hoping to investigate, though, weren’t those transmissions—it was the transmission that came after them that he wanted to take a closer look at. This transmission came five minutes and thirteen seconds after the last transmission containing recognizable speech. It lasted for twenty-one seconds, and consisted only of radio static. If the spacecraft had really crashed, this transmission shouldn’t have occurred. Curtis was hoping that there might be something hidden within this last transmission.

When he brought it up, the first thing he did was pull it apart. The audio might seem indiscernible at first glance, but it could contain tracks at different frequencies overlaid upon each other. One of those tracks might contain something. Just to cover his bases, he tried to separate fragments at all possible frequencies in which a human voice could register, as well as all known frequencies for Garrison transmissions. He wasn’t surprised when he found nothing; it was a pretty basic check that the Garrison had likely already conducted.

The next thing he did was to insert the thumb drive he’d brought into the computer. He’d come prepared with multiple programs loaded on it, and he’d need at least several of them for the next few steps. He began to separate fragments at unorthodox frequencies, and opened up a program to help him identify which resulting fragments were promising. There were a lot of possibilities the program had to run through, but Curtis had always been an expert at shortcuts, so it should take only a few minutes instead of the few hours it would have taken if he’d used the Garrison program instead.

While the program was running, Curtis sat back and glanced around the room uneasily. It had been a solid few months since he’d last been in here, but the memories were still fresh; he could clearly remember how he was transferred to another Division in the Garrison and was told his security clearance had been revoked, only the morning after the crash. When he’d confronted Iverson about it, he was just told that the mission had failed and was being treated as a closed operation—as a finished one.

He’d protested, of course, still somewhat emotional from the day before, but Iverson had pulled rank on him. It was the training beat into him as a cadet that had made him shut his mouth when Iverson told him to—but it was the side of him that had left the Garrison in the first place, that had never wanted to come back, that had brought him to this room.

The program beeped, indicating that it had found something, and the sound was so sudden in the silent room that Curtis damn near fell off his chair. It took a white-knuckled grip on the edge of his desk for him to right himself, heart pounding, before laughing quietly at himself for being so easily startled.

The audio fragment the program had isolated didn’t look like any kind of static Curtis had ever seen, which was proof that he had found something. It was also, however, at a higher frequency than anything he could think of. It was definitely out of the range for any kind of human voice or Garrison-issued technology. It was so mismatched to the system he was working within that even when he tried to play it, the Garrison’s software was unable to recognize it enough to translate it into something audible to the human ear. That was weird—any transmission sent through Garrison tech should have been adapted to his computer automatically. Thankfully, it was a problem easily fixed; it took maybe twenty minutes of tinkering with one of his half-formed programs to create something that could scale the fragment down to a manageable frequency. But when he tried to play it, he was frustrated to hear a series of garbled, unintelligible sounds.

It sounded almost as if the audio had been encrypted, which was perplexing– the Garrison’s software dealt with encryption and decryption on its own. For this audio to remain scrambled like this, it must have been encrypted by some method distinct from what the Garrison used for Kerberos. But that made no sense. Who else would have been on Pluto, able to transmit a message to Earth? Could the Garrison have been doing something aside from what was publicized in the Kerberos mission? Could they somehow be responsible for the deaths of Kerberos’ crew?

Curtis supposed the answer would lie within the decrypted file, but it looked like it had been manipulated using shift registers, and there was no way he could unscramble that without knowing the seed value. The seed value was a key, a small segment of code used to generate the entire cipher—but the issue with keys was that they could be completely randomly chosen. Curtis had never been taught any way to decrypt a cipher with absolutely no information about what kind of cipher it could be or what its key could even remotely look like.

He pushed himself back in his chair, more than a little frustrated. The audio had to be hiding something; there was no other reason for it to be encrypted. But as it was, he had no way of decrypting it. He could only try to decrypt something with an unknown key if it was in the form of plaintext.

Curtis shot up in his seat, brow furrowed and mind racing. If he could somehow convert the audio fragment into plaintext, he had partially completed a program that could decipher it, albeit tediously, by running through all possibilities for the key in terms of length and letters. He hadn’t brought the exact version of the program that he needed on the thumb drive; he’d have to try to recreate it from scratch, and quickly if he wanted to be done in time.

That was getting ahead of himself—he still needed to convert the digital file into plaintext, which he’d never done before. It hadn’t been covered during his time at the academy, but he was pretty sure he could modify a program designed to crack a letter-to-number cipher to run on the file and convert it to letters that way.

There way only one way to find out; and so he set to work.

As he typed, he felt his thoughts drift back to Shirogane. He could still remember the sinking feeling in his gut when he—and the rest of the world—was told that their legendary pilot was more fallible than they had thought. If he was right, and the Garrison had been covering up what had really happened on Pluto, then Shirogane had been used as a scapegoat to draw attention away from the truth. The thought made Curtis furious; he was fairly sure that Shirogane was dead, and for the Garrison to smear a dead man’s name to save face was despicable.

He spent the half hour that his work took him almost in a trance, stewing in his anger and indignation. Before he knew it, the file in plaintext form was spread across his screen. Curtis gave himself a few precious moments to celebrate, before forcing himself on to his next task: recreating his decryption program. This was going to leave him pressed for time, but he at least had a chance of finishing before 04:30—albeit barely—this way.

The coding was mindless, as he’d already written the program before and it was just a matter of typing it out. There were one or two parts where he couldn’t quite remember how he’d done something and had to try a few different ways before figuring out the right one. Overall, however, it went smoothly, and tediously. The bright red numbers of the digital clock above the door were his enemy; it seemed that he could glance at his screen for a brief second and yet an entire hour would have passed in the time it took him to glance back at the clock.

By the time he had finished typing, it was already later than he would have liked, and by the time the program finished running and converting the result back into audio, it was 04:07. He barely had enough time to process that he had succeeded before he knew he had to continue.

Before he played the supposedly-decrypted file, he held his breath. If this hadn’t worked, he had no time left to find something tonight. He couldn’t afford to hold onto Iverson’s ID during the day, but it would be near-impossible to take it again or to swipe Sanda’s in the future. This was his last chance; with this in mind, Curtis clicked play.

_“…So bring them on board…”_

Curtis’ heart stopped, and his mind screeched to a halt. The voice speaking didn’t belong to Shirogane, or either of the Holts. It didn’t belong to any of the people in the Garrison’s control room, either.

_“…See what they know…”_

There must have been someone on Pluto alongside the Kerberos mission. But something about that voice set all the fine hairs at the back of Curtis’ neck to stand on end. He couldn’t quite place why, but his mind was screaming at him that he wasn’t listening to a human. It would explain the abnormal frequency and encryption of the transmission, too. Theoretically, he’d always been aware that it was unlikely for humans to be the only kind of intelligent life in the universe, but the idea of…of aliens, actually being present within their solar system…seemed ridiculous to him.

 _“…Please…”_ began a new voice, and Curtis almost fell out of his chair again, because it was Shirogane. _“…We are from a peaceful planet…we mean you no harm…”_

Curtis sat forward in his seat, mind racing. If Shirogane’s voice had come through intelligibly, he could be certain that the decryption had been successful, and the first voice had been accurate. But it also proved that Shirogane had survived beyond his last transmission—which was impossible based on the Garrison’s explanation of the last transmission being cut off prematurely because of an impact.

“Shirogane’s still alive?” he murmured to himself, disbelievingly. Saying it aloud didn’t make it seem any more real.

He then heard a clanging sound behind him, and swung around with a small scream to realize, to his horror, that the metal door at the entrance to the control room was sliding open. Two armed guards, guns trained at his chest, ran into the room; behind them, arms crossed, walked in Iverson, looking angrier than Curtis had ever seen him before.

_Shit—_

There was no time to try to close the program, to hide evidence of what he had been doing. Curtis immediately raised his hands above his head and pushed his chair slowly back from his desk. Every fiber of his being was screaming for him to get down, to get away, but he feared that any sudden movement might incite the guards to shoot. So he stayed in his chair, and kept his gaze trained on Iverson. He didn’t dare speak.

“I just had to explain to Admiral Sanda why the boy I personally vouched for used my own ID to access classified files,” Iverson growled. Curtis flinched; he was furious. “You stole from a Commanding Officer, you violated curfew, you broke into a classified room, you accessed classified files—and, from the looks of it, you ran personal programs on the Garrison’s systems.”

There was no way out of this situation, only through it. “Yes, Commander,” Curtis said, pulse racing. “But I, uh, I found an encrypted message within the last Kerberos transmission.”

Iverson looked mere seconds away from trying to physically fight him. “That transmission is static. You’re looking for meaning where there is none.”

“There are clearly two voices,” Curtis said desperately, words tripping over each other in his panic. “One is an unknown man, and the other is Pilot Shirogane. If you—if you let me play it then you can hear—”

“Play it, then,” ordered Iverson.

With trembling hands, Curtis obeyed, and the room fell silent as the file played. Curtis caught the two guards glancing at each other when Shirogane’s voice began to play from the speakers. As it ended, he looked cautiously at Iverson, who looked slightly less murderous but not enough so to get him out of dangerous territory.

“I don’t know what you did to that file,” Iverson began, after a long minute of silence and the most excruciating eye contact Curtis had ever had to maintain in his life. “But you are hearing what you want to hear. Shirogane’s vital signs ceased at the same time as the assumed impact.”

“I know Pilot Shirogane’s voice,” Curtis insisted. “And that’s him speaking. The connection between his suit and the ship or Earth could have been disrupted, but you can’t fake or explain away his voice like that—”

He cut himself off when Iverson took several long strides forward, until he was standing right in front of him. Curtis tried and failed to resist the urge to shrink back into his chair when Iverson leaned down to his eye level to glare at him.

“I think you are failing to grasp the situation, Officer,” he snarled. “Attempting to manipulate the Kerberos files could be seen as treason.”

Curtis’ breath hitched in his throat, and he almost stopped breathing entirely. If the Garrison decided he’d committed treason, then he’d go ‘missing’ and never be found again. He’d known he was taking a risk, but he hadn’t wanted to risk his _life._ “I—I wasn’t—I didn’t—”

“Luckily for you, you’re still a minor, and the Admiral was feeling merciful tonight. If a sweep of these systems proves your programs didn’t damage the files, you won’t be charged with treason.”

“Please—” gasped Curtis, feeling a bit faint. “Thank you, you can look, I—I promise, _please,_ my programs aren’t even capable of doing anything like—”

Iverson sighed, straightening once more. “You know what I think?” He tipped his head back slightly, and suddenly he only looked tired. “I think you’re a well-intentioned but very stupid child who doesn’t want to believe his hero is gone and thinks he’s gonna be able to find something the adults couldn’t. I know you looked up to Pilot Shirogane, but he is dead, Curtis. You need to stop looking for something that isn’t there.”

There was something wrong. Iverson was trying to pretend like there was nothing there, but Curtis had confidence in his abilities as a programmer. He knew his decryption was legitimate. Iverson trying to ignore evidence when it was practically under his nose only confirmed Curtis’ suspicions: something fishy had happened with the Kerberos mission, but the Garrison was trying to cover it up.

If Iverson wanted to believe he was some kid in way over his head, he’d let him. Curtis bit his lip. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that day in the control room, Commander,” he said. He wasn’t faking the haunted tone to his voice when he spoke next. “I can’t get their screams out of my head.”

His partial truths seemed to work; Iverson sighed, running a hand over his face. “Curtis, I brought you here because I thought you would be beneficial to the Garrison. I still think you are. And I am well aware that throwing you into the Kerberos mission may have been a bit too much for you. But even though you are a special case, the rules still apply to you. And there are real consequences for breaking them.”

So, his life might not be in danger, but the Garrison was still refusing to let him go, and he was still in serious trouble. Curtis wasn’t faking his nervousness when he looked up at him with wide eyes. “…Like what? Commander?” he added hastily onto the end.

“You will be called to meet with the Admiral later this week, and given your official list of charges and punishments,” Iverson said. “Demotion and restriction of movement will be unavoidable, and all charges will appear on your permanent record, but you should avoid cell time, if that’s what you’re asking. And that is a _very_ lenient punishment.”

And it was. He almost couldn’t believe it. “I understand. Thank you, Commander,” he said earnestly.

Iverson had scared him shitless with the threat of treason; at this point, he was glad for anything that wasn’t death. Whatever punishments he’d get would undoubtedly be unpleasant, but he could recover from them if he was patient and stayed in line. He needed to build up trust with Iverson and Sanda again. If he played his cards right, he might be able to sneak his way back in to copy the files over onto a thumb drive. Then he could outsource the decrypted files to a third party who’d take them seriously, or to leak them so the Garrison wouldn’t be able to ignore them any longer. Maybe he could even run the audio of the first voice through the Garrison’s databases, to see if it matched any known Garrison officers or not. Or set up a scanner to check for and decrypt any similar transmissions within the solar system. But again, he was getting ahead of himself—he needed to accept his punishments for now and be patient.

“Now, hand over my ID and your thumb drive,” Iverson said, holding out a hand. “These men will escort you back to your quarters.”

Curtis complied hastily, dropping both items into his empty palm. On his way out of the room, he hesitated, looking back towards Iverson and opening his mouth to speak. But he quailed under his harsh glare, and turned to face forward again in silence. One of the guards took his arm, firmly but gently, and led him out.

 

* * *

 

In Shiro’s third year at the academy, his unit underwent a training sequence to prepare them for any situations in which they became prisoners of war. As the Garrison was training cadets to eventually pursue careers in space, it was highly unlikely that any of them would ever be in such a situation, and most of the cadets hadn’t afforded the lessons much importance.

As he, Matt, and a group of several others were herded towards the arena filled with roaring aliens, one line from that lesson burned itself into his head: _Do whatever it takes to stay alive and return home._ There was no shame, their Commanding officer had insisted, in protecting your own life in such extreme circumstances. As graduates of the Garrison, they were considered assets; protecting their lives meant protecting something valuable to humanity. In the event that they became captured, their mission would be replaced with one objective—to remain alive.

The armed guards prodding them all to move down the hallway hadn’t said anything to them, but Shiro had a pretty good idea of what they’d be expected to do once they reached the arena. It appeared that Earth wasn’t the only place where gladiator fights were a form of entertainment; only, fighting rings on Earth had been illegal for decades, while here they seemed almost government-sponsored and celebrated.

Shiro glanced towards Matt, who was hunched over towards his right but who had been stubbornly sticking to his side ever since they were separated from Sam Holt. He knew his best friend well—Matt had always stuck to books over the gym, and was absolutely useless without his glasses. He might have had an advantage if strategy and intelligence was the only thing that mattered, but as it stood, he wouldn’t be able to fight to survive.

The sentries shepherding them along the corridor had been chatting amongst themselves earlier, and Shiro had been able to garner that they were going to be sent up against someone called the ‘Galactic Gladiator’ first. From what they’d said about the undefeated fighter, the odds of winning against them were low at best. If Matt went into that ring, he was doomed to die there. If, by some miracle he survived, he might end up having to face off against Shiro. Both possibilities were unthinkable, so one thing became clear to Shiro: he had to get Matt away from the arena.

He was pretty sure that Sam had been taken away for his knowledge, and because he was too old to fight in the rings. If Matt became injured, he might have the chance of being sent wherever his father had been taken. He’d just have to hope that Matt would catch on to his plan and have the sense to prove his value to their captors; the sentries had forbidden them from talking to each other, most likely to prevent any sort of conspiracies. Matt was smart, and he was intuitive. He’d know that Shiro would never hurt him without reason. All he could do was get him away from the arena; after that point, Shiro would just have to have faith in his ability to keep himself alive on his own.

They had reached the end of the hallway, and Shiro could hear the roaring of the crowds gathered in the arena through the double doors in front of them. Beside him, Matt’s hands were trembling; his chin was tucked into his chest, his gaze directed towards his shoes. Shiro wished he dared put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him.

One of the sentries turned to face them. Instead of the standard gun the other sentries carried, this one was holding a curved sword; Shiro assumed this would be the weapon they would be forced to fight with. The sentry lifted the tip of the sword and jabbed it forward—pointing, Shiro realized—right at Matt.

Shiro panicked; he’d thought he’d have more time to enact his plan while other prisoners faced off against the gladiator first. He glanced sideways at Matt, saw his wide eyes, and made a split-second decision.

He shoved roughly past Matt, knocking him to the ground in the process, eyes focused on the sword. “This is _my_ fight!” he screamed, grabbing the hilt of the sword with both hands to wrestle it out of the sentry’s grasp. _Take me, take me instead,_ he chanted in his head. He tried to channel the fear and helplessness he felt into rage, hoping to emulate a bloodthirsty warrior perfect for a gladiator ring. Wielding the sword in a two-handed grasp, he whirled around, gaze landing on Matt. He faltered slightly when he saw the raw fear in Matt’s eyes, but snarled and pushed forward, lunging at him.

Matt screamed when the sword bit into his leg, just below the knee, and curled into himself instinctively. In one last desperate act, Shiro tackled him, pinning him to the ground, where the sentries wouldn’t be able to make out his face. He allowed himself to drop the act for a second, making eye contact with him.

“Take care of your father,” he whispered harshly, and Matt’s eyes widened in understanding.

Then the sentries were grabbing at Shiro’s arms and legs, pulling him up and off of Matt. Shiro struggled fiercely, thrashing his head back and forth and growling at them, as they pulled him away from his best friend and into the arena. The last sight he had as the doors slid shut was of Matt, huddled on the ground in a steadily-growing pool of blood, staring up at him.

As soon as he was pulled through the doors, the deafening cries of the crowds gathered there overwhelmed him. He winced; the all-encompassing, deafening sound was so oppressive that it felt like a physical weight pressing in on his head. Once the sentries released him and he jerked around in a circle, taking in as much information about his surroundings as possible.

He was in a square-shaped arena with a dirt floor. A large, metal pillar, at least eight feet in diameter, stood at each of the four corners. Aside from the pillars, the ring was completely empty. Surrounding it, however, was a seemingly-endless sea of people. All of them seemed to be the same type of alien that had imprisoned them in the first place. To his right, a few rows back into the crowd, sat a raised dais, upon which a throne had been placed. A hulking man with glowing purple eyes sat on the throne, covered from head to toe in red and silver armor. Whoever the man was, he was someone important; some sort of leader. He was sitting back in his chair, resting his chin on his hand. His gaze locked onto Shiro and then moved on, disinterested.

“And now, our favorite, our returning Galactic Gladiator—the undefeated, the magnificent, Myzax!” a voice boomed, and the crowd went even wilder than before. If Shiro had received such an introduction, he must have missed it. But this ‘Galactic Gladiator,’ the one the sentries had been talking about—he was to be Shiro’s opponent. And based on Shiro’s recent luck, this was likely going to be a fight to the death. He turned, trying to size up his competition.

Myzax was unlike anything Shiro had ever seen. He was absolutely gargantuan; if Shiro had to guess, he’d estimate him to be at least twenty feet tall. His arms and legs were as thick as tree trunks, and his head seemed almost too small for his body. He’d likely be strong, but not too fast, Shiro noted; and given his undefeated status he probably wasn’t unintelligent either. He was only wearing a breastplate and shoulder guards for armor; Shiro could probably get in some fatal damage with his sword if he targeted the parts of his torso left unprotected. He prayed that the alien’s skin wouldn’t be too tough for his sword; there was no way he could win against a beast like this if it came down to brute force.

What interested Shiro most about Myzax, however, wasn’t his armor or his skin: it was the weapon he was wielding in his right hand. It was unlike anything Shiro had ever seen before. At first glance, it appeared to be some kind of torch, with a ball of crackling electricity taking the place of a flame. The orb was giving off a low humming noise, but Shiro had no idea how the weapon would work.

And he had very little time to plan, as a loud beep rang through the ring and Myzax raised his weapon to the sky. He needed to figure out if the torch was a short-distance or long-distance weapon, so his first instinct was to whirl around and sprint towards the nearest corner—the nearest pillar. He ignored the boos and jeers from the crowd, heart racing as he pumped his legs as quickly as possible. He could hide behind the pillar, and—

The humming noise was the only warning he got before the ball of electricity was hurtling right at him. Out of pure reflex, he threw himself to the ground, landing hard on the dirt. He was fast enough to avoid the brunt of the blast, but felt a searing pain in his side and knew that the orb had managed to clip him. The knowledge sent a thrum of panic through him—how could he keep this up he was going to _die_ —but he swallowed it down and forced himself back on his feet before he could even process the extent of his injury. He let himself fall into the familiarity of his Garrison training, and began automatically counting the amount of time before the next attack. Soldiers often fell into patterns, and spacing between attacks was one of them; keeping a timer in your head was one of the first things the Garrison had taught Shiro when he was a cadet just going through his tactics training. If he let himself, he could pretend this was just another simulation from the class.

As soon as he had slipped behind the pillar, it shook with the force of a second blast. He noted that the second attack had come exactly twelve seconds after the first. Letting out a cautious breath, he pressed a careful hand to his side, trying to assess the extent of his injury. When he’d been hit, he’d been electrocuted, but he was worried that the force of the impact itself might have cracked a rib or two. Either way, he was fairly sure he hadn’t punctured a lung, and he had no time to fret over his injuries while Myzax was still lumbering towards him.

That had accomplished several things: Shiro knew that the weapon was long-distance, and that it allowed Myzax to throw the orb wherever he wished. After each throw, the orb then flew back to return to the torch from whence it had come. And lastly, the ball of electricity dealt one hell of a punch that he had to avoid as much as possible.

Myzax was still moving towards him, and his cover was about to become useless; he needed to move. Readying his sword, Shiro darted out from behind the pillar, heading towards the right. He was hoping to get Myzax to think he was heading to the next nearest pillar as opposed to the one he actually had his eye on. He glanced back to check, and saw that the gladiator was indeed taking the bait and following after him.

Shiro pulled himself into a sharp turn, abruptly reversing his direction so that he was charging straight at Myzax. He’d observed that the gladiator wasn’t all that agile, and was hoping to trap him in his momentum. It seemed to have worked, and based on their current trajectories, they were set to run straight past each other. Just what he wanted. Shiro raised his sword, baring his teeth. He could duck under Myzax’s arm as he went past, and try to get in a hit in his unprotected side—

The humming sound came again, and he hurled himself to the side, just in time to avoid a direct hit. That had come another twelve seconds after the last one; was that how they were always spaced out? How the hell was he supposed to get close enough to that thing when it was wielding a long-distance weapon? The torch appeared capable of throwing the orb faster than Shiro could run; he’d never be able to rush Myzax fast enough to avoid an attack. He scrambled to his feet, abandoning his plan of attacking Myzax in favor of sprinting the rest of the way to the pillar. It was too far away for him to make it before another blast, so he kept glancing back, anticipating another dodge.

But no attack came. Instead, the torch made a strange clanging noise, and the gladiator stood still, waiting. Shiro skidded to a stop just shy of the pillar, narrowing his eyes. It couldn’t be a malfunction, because Myzax didn’t appear concerned. He continued counting, and instead of twelve seconds this time, it was twenty before another ball was lobbed at him. He slipped behind the pillar to hide from the blast, mind racing. Whatever it was, there could be some sort of pattern. This had happened after the third throw, so he needed to wait it out, draw some fire, and see if it happened again.

It was pointless to try to rush the monster yet; instead, Shiro went on the defensive. He ran from pillar to pillar, using them to block the attacks. He wasn’t sure how intelligent Myzax was, but he tried to avoid establishing any predictable patterns in his movements. The dissatisfied rumbles of the crowd grew louder every time he dodged a hit, but he paid them no mind.

The fifth and sixth attacks had each come their allotted twelve seconds apart. Shiro was running across the ring, praying that the next attack would be slow to give him time to get there. At this point, he was exhausted, and every heaving breath he took felt like he was being stabbed in the side with a hot iron. He could tell that his running was slowing with each successive blast; if there was no pattern, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold out.

But the universe was smiling down at Shiro that day, and so the clanging sound came again from the torch. Shiro once again counted to twenty before the attack came, and he easily ducked behind the pillar to avoid it.

Now that he was sure it was a pattern, he could use the extra time to his advantage—the last time he’d tried to rush the monster, the torch had recharged before he could reach him. Myzax would always have the upper hand as long as his weapon was able to fire, but with an eight seconds to spare, Shiro was sure he could make contact. All he had to do was draw Myzax’s fire three more times, and be ready after the third attack to charge him.

The closer Myzax was to him, however, the better his odds were, because it would take him less time to reach him in the first place. So Shiro’s new goal for the next three attacks was to draw Myzax as close to him as possible.

The first throw came towards him, and he dropped to the ground and rolled to get behind the pillar before it reached him. _One._

Time to draw Myzax closer to him. Shiro let out a wordless yell, and gripped his sword with a two-handed grasp to bang it against the metal side of the pillar. It got the gladiator’s attention, but he only took a few steps towards Shiro. It wasn’t nearly enough.

He changed cover as the next attack came. _Two._ This time, after the blast, he stepped briefly out into the open and, brandishing his sword and channeling all of his rage, screamed the vilest things he could imagine in the gladiator’s general direction. He insulted him, he cursed him, he cursed his mother, he threatened to kill him in a number of gory ways—but mainly, he was hoping that even if Myzax couldn’t understand him, the sentiment would come across.

It appeared to, and the gladiator let out a roar, lumbering across the ring towards him. When he stopped, Myzax was closer than ever before, but not quite close enough, and he was getting ready for another attack. Shiro ducked back behind the pillar, but realized he was going to have to leave the safety of his cover before the third blast instead of after it if he wanted to make it in time for the recharging.

Shiro crouched slightly, preparing himself to run. Every nerve ending in his body thrummed in anticipation; a bead of sweat dripped from his brow into his eyes, and he wiped it away impatiently. Then he heard the hum— _three_ —and sprinted out from behind the pillar, heading straight for Myzax. He kept his gaze on him, even as he ducked and rolled under the blast, hearing it slam into the dirt just behind him. The adrenaline coursing through his veins made everything—his exhaustion, his pain, his fear—fall away. All that was left was him, and his sword, and his enemy.

The clanging sound came from the torch, and it was his chance. Shiro raised his sword, feeling a savage grin pull at the corners of his lips. Gotcha.

Myzax’s eyes widened in realization, and then Shiro’s sword was plunged hilt-deep into his side, just next to his breastplate. Shiro let out a snarl as he twisted the sword with all of his might, listening to the gladiator’s scream with a sick sense of satisfaction. He wrenched the sword out, and heard a clatter as the torch was dropped to the ground. But Myzax was still standing, if unsteadily; so Shiro stabbed him again. And again. At some point, he vaguely processed that the gladiator had fallen to the ground, but continued to drive his sword into him. He was breathing harshly, his frantic heartbeat sounding like thunder in his ears. He had to make sure Myzax was dead, because if he wasn’t then Shiro would have to fight him again, and he didn’t want to die, just wanted it to _stop_ —

With one final scream, he sank his sword deep into Myzax’s side, just below his elbow. Using all of his strength, he wrenched the sword _down,_ and didn’t stop until he had split the gladiator near in half, all the way down to his hip. Blood pooled around him, coating his arms and making his grip on his sword slippery; he’d gotten some splashed on his face and in his hair at some point, and was fairly sure he could taste the iron on his tongue. Some of the creature’s entrails had spilled out onto the dirt in front of him. His eyes stared sightlessly up at the ceiling.

Myzax, the undefeated, was dead.

Swallowing, Shiro dropped his sword and forced himself to his feet. In an arena filled with a silent, stunned crowd, the sounds of his ragged gasps seemed to echo off of the walls. But Shiro wasn’t concerned with the audience. Instead, he turned to face the throne, training his gaze on the purple-eyed man he’d seen sitting there before the match. Those glowing eyes were staring right at him; as he watched, the corners of one side of the man’s mouth turned up in a small smirk.

He barely registered the crowd breaking out into deafening cheers and roars, caught in the man’s gaze. In that moment, staring into the man’s face, he knew with certainty that he was faced with the most evil he’d ever seen in his life. Something about this man was so vile, so dark, that it turned Shiro’s stomach.

The referee of the match grabbed his arm, thrusting it into the air, and the man broke their eye contact. Shiro sucked in a deep breath—he hadn’t realized he’d been holding it—and looked around at the roaring crowd.

“Your Champion!” screamed the referee.

He was sweaty, bloodied, and covered in grime. The pain in his side was growing more and more pronounced with every passing second. And still the crowd was roaring, bloodthirsty, screaming for their ‘Champion.’ All around the arena, the sounds of the audience’s celebration filled the air, and in the midst of it all stood Shiro, alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can pry quiet badass Curtis out of my cold dead hands. And you can’t try to tell me it’s not canon, because there’s like no canon material on him anyways lmao
> 
> Fun fact: Curtis refers to Commander Iverson as “Iverson” in his head because he doesn’t trust or like him and wishes he could refer to him informally out loud. Shiro doesn’t have the same reason to distrust Commander Iverson and is more likely to respect his authority so he refers to him exclusively as “the Commander.”


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro crashlands on Earth after being MIA for almost a year. Curtis deals with the ensuing chaos at the Garrison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you thought this fic was discontinued, think again! I just realized writing has to wait for my college breaks because I'm too busy otherwise. So you can thank my spring break for this update!

The first thing Shiro registered was the pain.

He had been floating quietly in a blissful state of unconsciousness, his mind blissfully blank. For once, he had not dreamt; he had been free from the fear and the panic that had been governing his life for what felt like forever. There, he had no sense of time, or of urgency. Nothing. His mind had been shut down, put into standby, and he was just aware enough to realize it but not to process.

Then sensation came back to him, bolting down into his unconsciousness and dragging him mercilessly into the blazing agony of full feeling. As the numbness fell away, the panic came rushing in, a surge of memories and thoughts and _don’t take me_ and _stop it hurts stop it_ and overwhelmingly, louder than all the others, _Voltron_.

It was such that Shiro jerked awake, to bright blindness and featureless masks and the horrible, cloying sensation of being held down.

A while passed—what felt like an eternity, but was likely only seconds—before awareness settled into the nooks and crannies of Shiro’s mind. He realized that the blindness was just fluorescent lighting embedded within the ceiling above his head. He recognized the hazmat suits surrounding him as Garrison-issued, and almost sobbed aloud, because it meant he was back on Earth, that he was back home. He was in what looked to be a standard Garrison mobile quarantine unit, lying on a medical examination table. He was relieved that he’d managed to land close enough to the base for them to send out their personnel to the site.

“Pilot Shirogane,” came a voice, from one of the hazmat suits, and this time Shiro did feel tears pricking at his eyes, because he’d never thought he’d hear a familiar voice again. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Commander Iverson,” he whispered.

“Where have you been?”

Oh, how Shiro wished he could answer him. He felt like someone had stuck a rod into his head and scrambled up his brain. “My memory after our capture is…scattered, at best,” he said, slowly. “But while we were on Kerberos’ surface, this huge, alien ship appeared right on top of us. They had this purple beam, that—it pulled us up into the ship.”

The Commander’s face was completely neutral; Shiro couldn’t get any indication of how much the man believed him. “Why were you taken?”

“I’m not sure,” Shiro said. “I think the ship happened to come across us; it didn’t seem like they had been looking for us in particular.”

“What makes you say that?”

“When I first woke up, we were in the bridge of the alien’s ship,” Shiro told him. “The man who must have been the captain was talking to someone else, who must have had higher rank than he did, because he was asking him about what to do with us.” He hesitated. “Sir, there’s something I need to—”

“And what of the crew?” the Commander asked, and that caught Shiro’s attention. “Why aren’t they with you?”

Shiro shook his head. “I can’t remember much after what I’ve already told you, sir. Just bits and pieces, and none of it makes sense. I don’t have any memories with either of them.”

The Commander raised an eyebrow wordlessly. At this point, Shiro wasn’t even sure if the man believed him anymore. He let his head fall back onto the table, frustrated with himself. In the ride back to Earth, he’d tried his best to patch together the fragments of memories he’d retained, but hadn’t been able to recall anything new. Most of his memory of his time in space was a complete blank. None of the memories he did have were ones he wanted to relive, glimpses of savage battles and purple electricity and a hooded woman who always, _always_ hurt him, even (especially when) he begged her to stop—

He was brought out of his thoughts when hands came down on his shoulders to hold him in place. “Hey!” His eyes widened when straps were pulled over his legs and shoulders. “What are you doing?” he asked, voice quavering slightly.

“Calm down, Shirogane,” the Commander said. He began spouting something about quarantine procedures, but Shiro wasn’t listening. Panic was welling up from the farthest corner of his mind, the part that harbored the worst of his memories of the Galra, and it was spilling over into everything. He was starting to lose his grip; he could see it slipping into the awful, glowing purple of the woman’s labs. When he blinked, he thought he could see her, standing by his feet, and his heart leapt up into his throat, making it hard to breathe.

“You have to listen to me!” Shiro yelled, trying to blink away the image of the witch’s face. He couldn’t—the last time she’d had him on a table, he’d—his _arm_ —

“Shirogane, breathe,” a voice ordered sternly, and air rushed into his lungs in a shuddering gasp. He blinked up at the Commander, panting as he tried to get his breathing back under control. Right, he was on Earth, not in space, and he couldn’t afford to be panicking, because he had to warn them.

“Do you know how long you’ve been gone?” the Commander asked, and Shiro shook his head, frustrated.

“I don’t know,” he said frantically. There were more important things for them to be talking apart right then, they were wasting too much time. “Months? Years? Look, there’s no time—"

But then the Commander was moving away, towards the other side of the unit and one of the screens projected there. Shiro craned his head up to look over at him, ignoring the scientist at his left who was shoving a beeping metal pad in his face. “Aliens are coming here for a weapon, and they’re probably on their way,” he said desperately. Why weren’t they listening to him? “They’ll destroy us. We have to find Voltron.”

The Garrison had no idea what the Galra were capable of. They didn’t understand how easily and thoughtlessly they tortured innocents, or exploited planets, or murdered entire species. But Shiro was certain that if the Galra came to Earth looking for Voltron, they would raze everything to the ground in their search. They had no regard for innocence and life. The destruction they would wreak upon this planet was unimaginable for them, but not for Shiro. He had been dragged, kicking and screaming, into their world, had witnessed all of these things firsthand. Shiro may only have retained bits and pieces of broken memories, but they were enough. They were more than enough. He was the only one on this planet who could fully understand the danger they were in, but no one was _listening_ to him—

“Sir, take a look at this,” the scientist who’d been in Shiro’s face earlier. “It appears his arm has been replaced with a cyborg prosthetic.”

“Put him under until we know what that thing can do," the Commander responded, to Shiro's horror.

“No, no,” Shiro gasped, clenching both hands into fists and renewing his efforts to escape his constraints. “No, no, don’t put me under, no!”

Someone grabbed his head and forced it back against the table. He screamed out loud in desperation, even as he felt the prick of the needle at his neck. The woman was right there, she was _right there in front of him_ and the darkness was taking him, slowly pulling in from the edges of his vision and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. But then the woman was going to, was going to take something else and put another metal part in its place and when he woke up he wouldn’t know his own body again—

Then the darkness was complete, and he knew nothing.

 

* * *

 

Curtis jerked awake, heart pounding, to the sound of the doors to his quarters opening. He had no time to process what was happening; in a split-second, a flurry of footsteps moved into the room and the lights blared on, blinding him.

“What’s going on?” he croaked, covering his eyes with his hand and peeking blearily out from behind them to see who’d burst into him room. “What time is it?”

He was met with the sight of four armed soldiers, and the resulting wrenching feeling in his stomach forced him the rest of the way awake. “What’s happening?” he asked sharply, scooting back a little to press his back to the wall.

“We’ve been sent to bring you to Commander Iverson,” one of the soldiers said. “It’s urgent.”

Curtis scrambled to his feet, yanking on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. The soldiers ushered him out into the hallway while he was still pulling his shirt down around his hips. He eyed their drawn guns nervously, but they kept them aimed at the ground as they walked.

“Where are we going?” he asked, glancing around.

“To see Commander Iverson,” the soldier from earlier repeated, tone a bit irritated.

She volunteered no further information, despite not having actually answered his question, and so Curtis fell silent, mind racing. Before he’d gone to bed, the Garrison had been put into lockdown because of a Zulu Niner security situation, which meant a meteorite. Something significant must have happened, for Iverson to call him in the middle of the night like this. But what would a meteorite have to do with his specialization in communications? Why the armed escort? It didn’t make sense, and his confusion pooled unsettlingly in the corner of his mind.

The confusion turned into fear when he realized he didn’t recognize any of his current surroundings. Wherever he was being taken was somewhere he’d never had security clearance to access, even back when he’d been on the Kerberos team. A sense of foreboding tugged at him; if something happened, no one would know where to look for him. All he could think about was how the Garrison ‘disappeared’ their problems. He’d thought Iverson had just begun to forgive him, but what if he’d changed his mind? What if Sanda had changed her mind, and they’d decided that Curtis was more of a liability to the Garrison than an asset?

Curtis’ steps faltered, and then slowed to a stop entirely. If they had, no one would ever know where to look for him. When the soldiers turned back to look at him, he had to swallow a few times before he could drum up the courage to speak. “I, I need you to tell me where you’re taking me,” he said, lifting his chin to meet the lead soldier’s gaze.

She was unimpressed, going as if to grab his arm. “There’s no time. Just follow us.”

He flinched back from her hand, backing away. He was trying and failing to suppress the feeling of dread looming at the pit of his stomach. It was after curfew; no one was roaming the halls. No witnesses. “No, you can’t just,” he was struggling to find the words, struggling to draw any breath at all. They couldn’t just _take him_ like this—

“Jesus Christ, kid,” snapped the solider, finally succeeding in latching onto his arm with a bruising grip. Curtis tried desperately to pry her fingers loose, his heart leaping up into his throat. What had he been thinking, why hadn’t he tried to contact someone before leaving his room, but it was too late and he couldn’t get _away_ — “We’re not here to kill you. The Commander wants you in the control room up ahead, so come on.”

Despite his efforts to resist, she overpowered him, and began maneuvering him towards the end of the hallway. Curtis dug his heels in, fingers scrabbling at her hand. If they thought that he would just take their word for it, then they were idiots—he wasn’t about to, to let them just—

They stepped through the doors, and the panicked thoughts swirling around in Curtis’ mind slammed to a halt. They were standing in a room full of personnel, bustling about and murmuring to each other indistinctly. To his left, stood a dozen or so computers, monitors flickering between different security footage; at the far end of the room, a series of unknown faces were projected onto a larger screen.

It was a control room. He wasn’t going to die that night.

The soldiers who had escorted him there moved on, leaving him behind. Curtis was at a loss for words. His brain was shakily trying to process everything that had just happened, and while it did, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. The adrenaline from before was still coursing through his veins, giving him an energy that made him feel almost itchy—as if he were about to crawl out from his skin. He felt completely and glaringly out of place, standing blearily in his pajamas in the organized chaos of the other officers.

“You’re late,” a familiar voice snapped. Curtis’ head jerked up and to attention. Iverson was standing in the center of the room, arms crossed against his chest and face as stern as ever. He was sporting a rather impressive-looking shiner, but Curtis got the distinct impression that he would be yelled at for asking about it.

“I—” Curtis couldn’t quite seem to get his brain and his mouth to cooperate with each other. He did his best to swallow down the lump in his throat, and tried again. “I don’t know what you want me for.”

Iverson leveled him with an unimpressed look. “Come here,” he ordered, gesturing towards the computer nearest to him. “Tell me what you think of this.”

Curtis eyed him warily as he walked towards him. Something was off; Iverson looked way too stressed for this to be anything other than urgent, but he didn’t seem willing to volunteer any actual information about what was going on. Curtis wasn’t sure why Iverson thought he could drag him out of his bed at gunpoint at an ungodly hour of the night, drag him to an unknown, unlisted control room, and demand his compliance without so much as a word of explanation. Still, he couldn’t help his curiosity—he wanted to take a look.

But examining the computer monitor only served to heighten his confusion. He was looking at a list of dozens and dozens of audio files. All of them were dated from within the last few days, and all of them contained security codes that he’d never seen before. “Where did these come from?” he asked, turning to look at Iverson. “The coordinates on these don’t make any sense to me. It’s almost as if they’re coming from outside the solar system or something.”

Iverson just gave him an impatient look. “What do you notice about these files, Curtis?”

So he was right. It wasn’t uncommon for the Garrison to receive interference from deep space, but he’d never heard of these transmissions being saved in a database before. Why had the Garrison been collecting these? He clicked on one of the files to play it, nervously eyeing the numbers at the bottom right corner of the screen as the sound of static filled the air.

“I’m definitely not authorized to be looking at these,” Curtis warned. “These codes are for top security clearance, which I don’t have.”

“You do now,” said Iverson.

That made Curtis stop in his tracks. Something was going on, something serious, and no one was telling him what it was. He glanced at the pattern of the static he’d just played. “Commander, if I were to take this file apart, would I end up with another encrypted file like the one I found before?”

Iverson lifted his chin slightly. “Are you able to replicate your programs from before?”

“Commander, what’s going on?” Curtis tried. “Why are you—”

“I asked you a question, Officer,” Iverson snapped, and Curtis flinched back. “And I won’t repeat myself.”

He wasn’t going to let Iverson bully him like that. Iverson wanted something from him—which meant that Curtis was somehow the only person in the Garrison that could deliver it. And it had something to do with the decryption he’d done on the Kerberos transmissions, back when Shiro had first disappeared. The Garrison had confiscated his thumb drive that night, but he hadn’t exactly had time to save the newer bits of code. They must have been unable to fill in the blanks on their own—they must need him for that.

Curtis drew himself up and looked Iverson right in the eye. “Yes, I can. But you’ve held the threat of treason over my head to keep me from pursuing this for almost a year, Commander, and I think I deserve an explanation as to why you’ve changed your mind.”

Iverson seemed to realize he wouldn’t get anywhere without giving in to his request. “Fine,” he snapped, looking like it had cost him dearly to concede this one detail. Curtis tried not to delight too much in his obvious irritation.

He was led over to one of the computers displaying security footage of what looked like the meteorite that had sent the Garrison into shutdown a few hours earlier. It showed the meteorite crashing into the rocky terrain what looked to be a few miles out from the Garrison.

This confirmed Curtis’ suspicions that all this commotion was related to the meteorite, but not why. When he said as much, Iverson shook his head.

“The issue here is that this thing wasn’t a meteorite,” he said. “It was a spaceship—a small one, but definitely not a hunk of rock.”

If he’d been sleepy before, he certainly wasn’t anymore. “Show me,” he ordered, leaning closer to the screen and ignoring the look Iverson gives him at his disrespectful language. “It wasn’t one of ours?”

“Not one of ours,” confirmed Iverson, sounding like he’s getting on his last nerve. Curtis was too amped up about the possibility of an _alien spaceship_  to care. The screen switched to a live feed of what must be the wreckage—a twisted heap of gray and purple metal.

Curtis wasn’t an aircraft engineer, so he didn’t waste time examining the outside. “You still have guys on the ground?” he asked. Iverson nodded. “I want to see this thing’s controls.”

“Our engineers are working on it,” Iverson said. “We’ll let you know about anything we recover that’s of interest to you.”

That was code for ‘we’re not letting you look at this until we know what it is.’ Curtis ground his teeth together—there was a fucking _alien spaceship_ on earth and the Garrison was still making him deal with bureaucratic bullshit—until a thought occurred to him. “Was anything inside?”

The way Iverson looked at him then let him know he was on the right track. “…We don’t really know what to make of what we found,” he admitted.

Curtis seized upon that. “Show me,” he almost begged, eyes wide. His mind was racing, full of possibilities—alien devices, life forms, weapons, or more. Whatever was in there, he knew, would be enough to keep him and the Garrison’s researchers occupied for months, if this was the way Iverson was reacting. Iverson began to pull up the footage, and Curtis felt like his heart was in his throat. This was going to be huge.

Whatever Curtis had thought ‘this’ was going to be, nothing could have prepared him to see Takashi Shirogane laid out in a stretcher, clearly awake and _alive_ —

He felt all the blood drain from his face. Iverson kept speaking, but the words were distorted, indistinguishably fading into the background. Shiro was alive. He’d known that the Garrison had been hiding something about the Kerberos mission, and he’d been pretty sure that Shiro had survived beyond what the Garrison was telling him. The way Iverson had been so determined to shut down his investigations had only strengthened his belief that he was really on to something… But then a month had passed, and then another, and in a few weeks it was going to be the anniversary of the failure of the Kerberos mission. Ages and ages of nothing—no signs of life, no contact, not even a hint that something had happened and was simply being kept from him. He’d told Iverson that Shiro was alive, but almost a year had passed with no further evidence of that.

And despite what Curtis liked to think about his self-confidence—despite the fact that he knew he was competent, that his decryptions had been accurate—a year was a long time to go with nothing to show for your faith. He’d found himself alternately doubting his programming and his conclusions, had poked every sort of hole he could think of in his idea of what had happened. There had been too many unknowns, not enough evidence. He’d started to doubt that Shiro was alive, or that he’d ever come back even if he was.

But then Shiro was there, right on the screen in front of him. Back on earth—only a few miles away from where Curtis was now. He might have a streak of white in his hair and a metal prosthetic instead of an arm, but he was undeniably Takashi Shirogane.

He was alive, and Curtis was _right_.

“—Officer Bose!”

Curtis started at a hand on his shoulder. “What?” he asked faintly, tearing his eyes away from the image of Shiro.

Iverson gave him an unreadable look. “…I know that this is a lot to process,” he said finally. “But we need you to focus.”

Curtis frowned, coming back to himself instantly. Iverson would only say that if—

“What happened to him?” he asked.

“He was taken from the quarantine that was set up at the site of the crash,” Iverson said. “Four others were identified by surveillance footage at the scene. We believe they were the ones who took Pilot Shirogane.”

Curtis blinked up to where Iverson was pointing at the four faces projected on the screen—faces he had ignored earlier. All of them were unbelievably young. One of them was familiar, now that he was paying attention.

“Keith,” he murmured. The boy had been kicked out of the Garrison soon after Shiro’s disappearance had been announced. “He never stopped believing that Shiro was still alive.”

Iverson glanced at him. “You knew him?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “But he was very…vocal about his opinions.”

Keith Kogane had been brought in by Shiro, and had followed him around like a puppy. He’d always had issues with his temper—Curtis could remember a couple fights breaking out in the mess hall—but Shiro had always been able to calm him down. He’d staunchly refused to accept the news of Shiro’s death and had lashed out angrily at anyone who tried to tell him otherwise; with no Shiro around to stop him, he’d gotten himself kicked out for violence.

But he’d been right about Shiro—and he’d insisted that from the beginning, before Curtis had found evidence to support him. It made Curtis wonder if it was simply coincidence that his denial lined up with the truth, or if there was something more there.

“Who are the other three?” he asked Iverson. The information below the photos said that they were cadets, but… “Is Katie Holt related to Sam and Matthew Holt?”

“Yes,” Iverson sighed. “She infiltrated the Garrison under the name ‘Pidge Gunderson.’”

Curtis raised an eyebrow. In order to do that, she must’ve been able to bypass the Garrison’s database to insert false records, which was…impressive, to say the least.

“The other two were part of Holt’s unit at the Academy,” Iverson told him. “They don’t have a connection to Kerberos; we believe their involvement comes through Holt.”

It shouldn’t be a coincidence, then, that two of these people had been close to members of the Kerberos mission. Katie and Keith must have known something, or sensed something, that no one else had…that, or they’d both been in denial and happened to be right. The only way to know for sure would be to ask them. But Curtis was sure that their whereabouts must be unknown, or unconfirmed; otherwise they would already be in Garrison custody.

“How long ago did they escape?” Curtis asked.

“Less than an hour ago,” grumbled Iverson. Curtis glanced back to the computer monitor in front of them, where Iverson stood next to Shiro, and idly wondered if the break-out was responsible for the man’s black eye. Based on his current mood, it was likely. “We’ll let you know if we find them or establish contact.”

Curtis blinked at him. The Garrison was trying to keep him away from the insanely interesting alien spaceship that was practically outside his door, which was—not fine, because he was dying to get a look at it and the excitement of the unknown made him feel like he was going to explode, but he was at least willing to be mature about that. But the Garrison was also being cagey about Shiro’s whereabouts, which meant they didn’t want him involved in the search for him. That was fine, but it left the question:

“What am I here for?” What did they want with his programs?

Iverson sighed—he was doing that a lot, lately, though maybe that was because Curtis seemed to have a knack for irritating him. “Your terms of employment detail that any new material you produce on our systems belongs to us. That includes your code.”

Curtis gritted his teeth. “What are you trying to say?”

“That your code is our property,” Iverson snapped, “and that, as such, we are ordering you to replicate it for our servers.”

Unbelievable. Curtis was so furious that he couldn’t help but ask, “Why should I?”

He regretted it the second he said it—not because he didn’t mean it, but because it only made Iverson angrier. “The Admiral will conclusively pardon you of any allegations of treason, should you produce the algorithm we desire.”

So they had gotten nowhere—it was just back to the same old threats. Despite having been given punishments for his previous transgressions (even though he had been _right_ ), the investigation into his potential ‘treason’ had been ongoing and inconclusive for months. It seemed, based on recent events, that the investigation would remain as such for as long as the Garrison needed to order Curtis around, or keep him silent.

“And if not?” Curtis asked, seething.

Iverson gave him a look. “You know what.”

Curtis cursed Iverson in his head for blackmailing him, and then cursed himself for being stupid enough to get caught with a treason charge. It took him a few moments of careful breathing to calm himself down enough to speak. “Tell me the specifics of the algorithm you want, and I’ll tell you the resources I need to get it done.”

 

* * *

 

“We have a development,” barked Iverson as he barged through the doors.

Curtis flailed around for a moment, startled at the sudden intrusion in what had previously been a silent room, before the meaning of Iverson’s words caught up to him and he sobered instantly. He saved and exited his programs, pushing back from the desk.

“Commander?” he asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Iverson had wanted him to set up a program compatible with the Garrison’s satellites that could scan the solar system for alien transmissions, decrypt them, and relay them to the base. It required all of the effort it had taken him to decrypt the Kerberos transmission, and then some; he’d been working all through the night and into the early morning and was nowhere near close to finishing.

“An unknown spacecraft was observed flying low to the ground near to the crash site, before exiting the atmosphere,” Iverson said. “It was different from the ship that crashed carrying Pilot Shirogane, but we have reason to believe that he—and the four involved in his escape—were aboard. We lost contact with the ship when it passed our satellites stationed at Pluto a few minutes after it took off.”

“What?” Curtis gasped, shooting to his feet. There was too much to unpack there—Shiro, the cadets, something flying from earth to Pluto in minutes, but— “What did it look like?”

Iverson appeared uncomfortable. “It was blue, and shaped like a…lion.”

Curtis blinked.

“A lion, Commander?”

“A lion.”

Curtis couldn’t help but giggle to himself, ignoring the cross look Iverson gave him. 24 hours ago, the most important thing in his life had been the Kerberos transmission he’d been ordered to keep secret. Now, he was dealing with resurrected space pilots and alien spaceships shaped like giant blue cats.

“If you’re done laughing,” Iverson snapped, “we have one transmission in particular for you to decrypt immediately. Your other project can wait. This transmission came in as the…lion…entered space. We believe it was from an alien vessel stationed just beyond our satellite’s reach, just outside the solar system.”

Curtis recognized Iverson’s tone as what it was—a warning—and abruptly sat back down at his desk. It wouldn’t be smart for him to deliberately antagonize the man who was blackmailing him. “That’s simple enough—I’ve got the code written already—but it’ll take some time to find the key. I’ve been experimenting to try and make it faster, but it’ll still take close to an hour.”

Iverson shoved a thumb drive at him and left the room, which Curtis took as a cue to get to work. He’d managed to aggregate the separate components of his original programs into one massive program, and all he had to do was run it for the file on the thumb drive and let the program to the hard work for him.

In the meantime, he returned to his original task of trying to figure out how the fuck the Garrison’s satellites worked—he’d worked with them constantly, but had never needed to actually program one, and it was proving to be a pain in the ass. Because of their higher level of security, he couldn’t use the programming language he knew best, which was all sorts of frustrating. So he was glad when the time was up, because it gave him an excuse to step away from satellites for the time being.

Iverson hadn’t arrived yet—there were still a few minutes left before they hit the hour mark, and the guy was probably busy with the revelation of intelligent alien life and everything—but Curtis saw no harm in playing the decrypted audio file through, just once.

_“…heading out of the system…”_

Curtis frowned. For an alien’s voice, it sounded very…human. And along that line, why was an alien race—presumably from an entirely different planet—speaking intelligible English? Or if they weren’t, what was translating it for them? These were all problems for a future Curtis, one who wasn’t being held hostage by the Garrison under the threat of treason, but they were fascinating, nonetheless.

_“…follow that lion…”_

This was a different voice, but it appeared to be giving some kind of orders. Iverson said that this was from an alien ship near the solar system; if the lion spaceship had been exiting the solar system as Iverson had said, it would make sense that the aliens had seen it leaving. But why was the lion important?

_“…capturing that lion is your first and only priority…”_ continued the second voice, and then the transmission cut out.

Curtis had millions of questions, and no answers. What the hell was a lion-shaped, alien spaceship doing on earth? How long had it been there? Why were the aliens only looking for it now? Why were they looking for it at all? How did Shiro and the others find it, or know how to fly it? Where were they flying? Why? Would they ever return?

Iverson came back into the room, and something about Curtis’ face must’ve betrayed his confusion, because his shoulders slumped and he sighed again. “You listened to the transmission, didn’t you.”

There was no point in denying it, so Curtis nodded wordlessly, and then played it for him.

After the transmission finished, Iverson stood there, silent, for what felt like an eternity. His brow was furrowed in thought; he was likely dealing with all of the questions Curtis was. With their current power dynamic, however, Curtis was a little too scared to break the silence and interrupt his thinking.

Finally, Iverson straightened, having come to a conclusion about something. Curtis did his best not to look too expectant or impatient, looking up at him from his desk.

“You are to continue on your assignment until it is completed,” Iverson ordered him. “Once you are done, you will turn your work over to me and management of the programmed satellites will be carried out by others. At that point, you will be sworn to an oath of secrecy and Admiral Sanda will pardon you of your allegations. You will then return to your position as Communications Officer, and will never speak of this again.”

Curtis’ eyes bugged out of his head. “Excuse me?” he squeaked. “Aliens— _aliens_ —are real, one of our pilots returns from space after being missing for a year before flying away on a spaceship shaped like a _lion_ , and you want to just cover this up?”

“Watch your tone,” Iverson ordered. “The aliens are clearly more interested in the lion’s technology than in earth, and do not wish to engage with us.”

“They’re still out there!” Curtis couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Commander, this changes everything. What if they come back? What if there are more? What was Shiro doing here, and why did he leave? Why did he take those cadets? Sir—"

“That was an order, Officer,” snapped Iverson, with enough ire that it stopped Curtis dead in his tracks. “And once you swear your oath of secrecy—and you _will_ swear—to leak any sort of information about this alien presence will be treason.”

At this point, if Curtis heard the word ‘treason’ one more time he was going to scream. He was gripping the armrests of his chair hard enough that his knuckles ached.

“By now you should know all-to-well just how dangerous a charge of treason can be,” Iverson said. “And rest assured, the second time around you will find us considerably less willing to offer you deals in exchange for your life.”

And with that, Curtis was left to sit in his own silence, contemplating just how screwed both he and the planet were going to be if the aliens ever came back.

**Author's Note:**

> Drinking game idea: as you read further through this fic, take a shot every time I describe Curtis’ eyes in increasingly bizarre and creative ways to avoid using the cursed fanfic words: sapphire, azure, cyan, and aquamarine. This will work better as the fic gets longer. For a hint of what’s to come, current drafts include: delicate blue, pale blue, dainty blue, pastel blue, powder blue, baby blue, and ice blue. If you're not of age, take a shot of water. You'll either be very drunk or very hydrated by the time you finish reading


End file.
